racial harmony day 2014

we were invited to dress [up] in ethnic wear in celebration of racial harmony.

(not sure how long i can keep these photos up, depending on how open my colleagues are to online privacy)

some of my closest friends for the past decade in my life are from the minority races, and every now and then, i get the sense that i seem to be the minority for that.

racial harmony day hardly scrapes the surface of the issue. while i think racial prejudice will continue to exist in some minor form or another, true racial harmony should imply more than just the absence of racially-driven conflict.

how can we become as colourblind as, say, the brazilians? can we do without the “race: chinese/malay/indian/other” option on forms? will it actually matter, if we take race out of the identity card (and replace it with something more useful like the blood type?) can we begin to take colour out of public speech, beginning with parliamentary concerns and non-colour/community-divided national day rallies? of course, all that is easier said than done, given that different communities have varying concerns that require different policies and solutions.

still, something to look forward to. (ok, given the way our youth are becoming effectively monolingual in English anyway, perhaps the rallies in non-english official languages will be scrapped soon enough. and that is another issue for another post)